I currently use the Clie T650. The display is easy to read in any lighting condition, which is a huge improvement. My previous PDAs were good in either bright light (including outdoors) or indoors, but not both.
However I hate the tiny buttons, and the MP3 player feature was a waste of money since I also own an iPod. Nothing’s perfect, I guess. I suggest you go to a well stocked store and compare. The look and feel is as important as the specs, if not more so.
Compaq iPaq user here, after having 2 Visor Deluxe PDA’s go belly up on me and subsequently into the trash can.
I’m extremely happy with the iPaq vs. the Palm OS on the Handspring PDA. I can’t see going back to a Palm OS at this point, it just seems dated vs. PPC.
MeanJoe
After all the early adopters bought Pocekt PCs, the vendors realised that they either had to offer enterprise level features (fingerprint ID, built in 802.11b) or lower their prices.
I had an Ipaq the first week they came out. I paid $550 for it.
It’s screen just died on me so I went a shoppin. I was leaning towards a $180 ish Clie. I use a pda for addresses, calendar, timesheet (excel) and the IT phonebook (also Excel)
I ended up with the HP ipaq 1910. It’s 20% smaller, has twice the memory, has a STELLAR screen, and quite improved battery life (removable), and it was $250 cheaper.
Ah the price of progress.
Although I’m not giving anywhere near the level of detail other, obviously more informed posters are, I’d like to add a thumbs up positive review for the Palm m130. It’s got a nice price/features balance, and (important for me in my line of work) has survived multiple bumps and drops unscathed. I have to say I find the new Palm Tungsten handhelds fairly droolworthy, but I’ve never used one so can’t really comment.
Palm 505. Got the entire D&D 3E Player’s Handbook on it, some important Excel spreadsheets, my phone numbers, a copy of Casino Royale…
It’s becoming more and more handy.
My first PDA was a Palm m100 -2mb, mono screen, no memory card slots. Someone left it in my store and after about 9 months I decided I’d take it home. I hardly used it at first. Mostly just a fun toy loaded with games. After I started my new job and had to keep track of info all day I used it ALOT!
It worked great, but I really needed something with a better screen. I found it very hard to use in low light and the green backlight was bothersome.
I decided on the Palm m130 - colour backlighted screen, 8 mb, memory card slot.
I used the m130 for about 2 days and decided it wasn’t worth the extra cash for what I improved. (I paid $218 for it). I returned it and went back to my m100 and started looking around.
I thought about the Palm Tungsten, but for the price it didn’t seem to really improve on the basic Palm model much.
The handsprings looked pretty good and are currently at a fair price. Considering they aren’t being made anymore I decided against those.
I didn’t want to move to the PPC because I just don’t care much for the OS. I really like how Palm works and it has never locked up on me. I figured I better stay in the OS I know and trust.
I started looking at the Sony Clie’s. Nice little machines, clear screens, lots of options. I settled on the new Clie’ SJ33 -16 mb, colour backlight screen, memory card slot, stereo headphone jack (for mp3 files), user replacable batteries, and a nice built in cover and package.
I’ve VERY pleased with it. It’s about the same size as a poker deck. The screen is crisp and clear. Battery power is very good. The option to load up a memory stick with mp3 files and use it like a walkman is an added bonus. I can play movies, games and even…errrm… keep track of work stuff.
I paid $266 for it.
I’ve had a Palm IIIxe for a few years now, and I swear by it. It really proved its worth two years ago when an ice storm left me stuck at a friend’s house and I had both my employer’s and my client’s phone numbers right there. I’ve used it to store everything from my boss’s itinerary for an upcoming business trip to chunks of poetry I’m tinkering with to how long to make the sleeves of a sweater I was knitting for my best friend. I’ve also played way too many games of rummy and euchre on it. The reason my boss’s itinerary is on it is so that I could beam it to him so that he’d have his schedule in an easily accessible form. I’ve also got to show him how to beam information back and forth (I was hired for my geekiness).
There are two palm accessories I particularly recommend. One is a program call QuickOffice, which allows you to load Word and Excel files onto your Palm Pilot and work with them. I haven’t used the Word version much, but I’ve used the Excel version for a bunch of stuff. There’s also a folding keyboard which is nice if you’re going to be doing a lot of typing. It folds up to a little larger than the Palm Pilot, but it works nicely. A couple of friends of mine once typed the service leaflet for a Wiccan ritual into their Palm Pilots using these things while having dinner at Denny’s.
CJ
I got a Palm m505 and Ive gotten to the extent that I feel lost without it. I have practically my entire life on there.
I’ve noticed that at the start, I would play games on it constantly but that has become less and less now. Right now, the most useful thing I do with it is read the news. I downloaded a program called AvantGo which can sync with most simple webpages. Since many of the major new vendors have a website specifically for Handhelds, I can get a lot of national and international news for free and with a lot less hassle than the dead-tree versions. Currently, I have th Sydney Morning Herald, Reuters, NY Times and BBC on there.
On top of that, I got a 32MB memory card which is practically full of ebooks (technically, they are illegal but any books on there which I do not own already, I can theoretically go to the library to check out so I dont feel like I am depriving the authors of anything).
Basically, the best thing is that it can help fill up a lot of “dead time” in my day.
I thought of 2 more things you may want to consider before buying:
once you’ve got a smaller list of favourite models, make sure you go to a store and actually handle each of them. Some Sony PDAs have really tiny useless buttons - they compensate by having a really useful scroll-dial. The buttons of the Visor Edge are metal and very nice, whereas the 4-way navigator button of the Dell Axim is quite mushy. YMMV, so make sure you have looked at your favourites.
ask around what type of PDAs your friends and colleagues use. In addition to being able to exchange apps and data, it is always nice to have somebody who can do a little first-line support for a new user